In what's become a disturbing routine during his presidency, Barack Obama has pleaded with lawmakers to change America's gun laws.

"This is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together," a visibly frustratedObama said hours after an October shooting at an Oregon community college. "This is a political choice we make to allow this to happen every few months in America."

What is clear is that other countries don't have the gun violence issues that the US does. The president has tried to hammer home this point again and again.

"We're the only country in the world where this happens, and it happens once a week," Obama said after a school shooting in Troutland, Oregon last year left two people dead.

"At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other developed countries," Obama repeated after a mass shooting in June left nine dead at a church in Charleston.

And after the shooting in Oregon, he brought it up again.

"We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months."

Here, we take a look at the data that shows why America is so unlike the rest of the world when it comes to the popularity and the abuse of guns. We'll look at the role that policymakers play in the gun-control debate, and we'll look at what can be done (if anything).

It isn't pretty, but it's important. Hundreds of thousands of American lives hang in the balance.

Compared to the rest of the world, the US is an extreme outlier. This chart shows that the more guns a country has, the more gun deaths it has. The US takes this relationship to the extreme.

This chart of industrialized nations shows that the US and Mexico stand alone when it comes to gun ownership and gun homicide.

Here's a look by the Small Arms Survey at the relationship between a country's homicide rate and that country's gun homicide rate. You'll notice that for the most part, the non-firearm-homicide rate remains roughly even regardless of the total homicide rate. The main driver of the high homicide rate in certain nations is due to gun homicides.

The US has pretty unique gun laws. US federal law says almost anyone can buy a gun, provided they are of age, the gun is not an assault rifle or machine gun, and they are not a felon, fugitive, or non-citizen.

AP

In the UK, handguns are illegal and a person needs to get a certificate — and prove they have a good reason — to own a rifle or shotgun. Anyone convicted of a crime cannot touch a gun for five years. There are 0.07 gun homicides per every 100,000 people.

AP

In Canada, a person must wait 60 days to buy a gun. A person applying for a mandatory license must take a training course, notify next-of-kin, have several references, and pass a rigorous background check. There are 0.5 gun homicides per every 100,000 people.

In Japan, touching a gun without a license can result in 10 years in prison. To obtain a rifle or shotgun, a citizen must undergo an exhaustive application process involving several exams, health tests, police authorization, background checks, and the installation of a safe. There are 122 million people in Japan. In 2008, there were 11 gun homicides. In 2006 there were 2.

Australia is an interesting case. Following the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre, which left 35 people dead, the Conservative-led government banned all automatic and semiautomatic weapons, and mandated licensing involving background checks and waiting periods. The government also instituted a gun-buyback program, where 650,000 weapons were voluntarily handed in for $360 million.

Scene from the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996.AP

The result? A major drop in gun deaths, suicides, and homicides. Australia had 30 gun homicides in 2010, 0.13 gun deaths for each 100,000 people.

The NRA claims more than 3 million members. Although that's roughly 1% of the country, the active membership claims a lot of electoral influence.

The NRA also gets a significant amount of money from the gun industry in the form of donations, contributions, and fundraising assistance.

The NRA also used its influence to gut the ability of the CDC to do any sort of research on the impact of firearms on human injury and death, deliberately making it harder to conduct scientific research.

Furthermore, since the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, research has shown that more Americans are in favor of protecting the rights of gun owners than instituting gun-control laws

Pew Research

In fact, since 2012, the number of Americans who say gun ownership protects them from being the victims of crime has grown by nine percentage points.

Pew Research

Republicans and African-Americans are the two groups who most believe gun ownership protects them from being victims of crime.

Pew Research

Incidentally, as the debate over gun control gets more heated, the sale of firearms goes up, as evidenced by the increase in sales of Smith & Wesson products. The explanation? If you perceive there is a risk you will not be able to buy guns in the near future, then you buy your guns now.

Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation 2014 Annual Report

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre has claimed that gun-free school zones make children sitting targets, and thus teachers should be armed.

AP

But children are already pretty safe in schools as is. A very small number of the 30,000 annual gun deaths take place in schools.

Here's a chart showing what a hypothetical correlation between video game consumption and gun murders should look like.

But here's what that correlation actually looks like. There isn't a link between gun murders and video games.

Could it be violence in the media?

YouTube/Universal Pictures

Actually, probably not. There's just no evidence to support that. A 2008 paper by American University professors Joanne Savage and Christina Yancey found that "A review of both aggregate studies and experimental evidence does not provide support for the supposition that exposure to media violence causes criminally violent behavior."

"The study of most consequence for violent crime policy," they wrote, "actually found that exposure to media violence was significantly negatively related to violent crime rates at the aggregate level."

"Most studies on which reviewers have been relying for their conclusions are decades old and they do not employ modern statistical methods to estimate effects," they wrote. "Programs such as Batman and Bonanza were used as the high-violence shows."

A landmark 1986 paper by Steven Messner — which originally set out to prove violent media was linked to real-world violence — found that exposure to television was actually consistently was linked to reduced real-world violence across the board.

Many people advocated for the reinstatement of the assault-weapon ban, as assault weapons are frequently used in many of the worst mass shootings.

Generally, when Americans kill they usually use a handgun.

But a survey of mass-shooting incidents found that more than twice as many people were shot and significantly more people killed when an assault weapon was used. However, the reinstatement of the assault-weapon ban was dropped from the Senate's 2013 reform package after it became clear it wouldn't pass.

Other proposals included a ban on high-capacity magazines, like the one used at the mass shooting that left former Rep. Gabby Giffords wounded. This too was dropped from the 2013 reform package.

A 1999 study of recent ATF investigations found rampant abuse of the "gun-show loophole" — in which a person who is not allowed to buy a gun does so at a gun show, where background checks aren't necessary.

The motion to require background checks on gun-show purchases failed in the Senate, six votes shy of hitting the mandatory 60 votes to move forward on debate.

So what's going to happen?

Dylann Roof with a Confederate flag and a gun.Alleged Dylann Roof website

Probably nothing. History has proven that mass shootings do little to move the needle when it comes to gun control.

Pew Research

That is despite the fact that mass shootings have become more common in recent years. From 2000 to 2007, an average of 6.4 mass shootings happened each year. From 2007 to 2014, an average of 16.4 mass shootings happened each year.

FBI

In addition, politicians have become resigned to the fact that gun control laws cannot be passed in the current political climate. Congressman Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told the Hill after the Charleston shooting that "Congress is becoming complicit" in ignoring gun reform.

CBS

And if that is not enough, President Barack Obama essentially admitted that there is nothing he can do to pass gun reform in his comments following the Oregon shooting. "I hope and pray that I don't have to come out again during my tenure as president to offer my condolences to families in these circumstances. But based on my experiences as president, I can't guarantee that, and that is a terrible thing," he said.